Friday, October 21, 2011

OPERA Trying to send a "bit" of information faster-than-light.

About 3 weeks ago the OPERA neutrino experiment at Gran Sasso laboratory reported FTL neutrinos. Since than, many explanations came about to explain how this surprising measurement was probably an error, discussions like (the inconsistencies) of tachyons, the problematic relation on astrophysical data, environmental explanation on experimental details, and general relativity effects.

But farther on this note, OPERA scientist thought that maybe they could send a "bit" of information to travel FTL. However, even thought FTL is still in debate OPERA assumes that the "measurement is correct and that there is no systematic shift in the measured data". They thought that based on this assumption it was possible to send a "bit" of data at FTL, with an experimental setup and of course to see if there was any mistakes on the Lorentz symmetry or errors in the causality principle.

So far there is no errors on the Lorentz symmetry as well as the on the causality principle based on the experiment, thus, the intend to send a "bit" of information was unsuccessful meaning that it was not possible to send information at FTL.

So far CERN/OPERA scientist believe that the rejection of at least one of these "basic understandings of nature" (Lorentz symmetry or causality principle) might be because of the actual "transmission" of the "bit" of information sent at FTL and not by an extrapolation in the experimental set.

The group of scientist who wrote the paper on the experiment at CERN quoted: " Nature may be subtle, protecting these basic principles with the help of some not yet understood 'censorship' mechanism".

What sort of mechanism is this?? if such mechanism has a censorship on this principles, it is quite unusual to see neutrinos having the ability to travel Faster-Than-The-Speed-Of-Light, therefore, an error must be going on somewhere on this measurement. Why can a particle travel faster than c and a "bit" of information can't? It smells like rotten fish to me, and quite honest we will never know if this experiment was incorrectly set up until we get farther results from other institutions that have measured the neutrino speed and confirmed that, indeed, it is possible that neutrino particles travel faster than light. Until than, my best guess would be that physicist don't have a theory to explain why information goes slower than the speed of light and the apparent measurement of a neutrino particles shows the possibility to break the universal speed limit, meaning that the "basic understanding of nature" might not be "so basic" until farther results.

But I had to ask myself this, if neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light and not be able to send a "bit" of information, what about quantum entanglement or the 'spooky action at a distance' being able to send random information to the other side of the galaxy instantaneously? Whatever it is, here I leave you with a video by Michio Kaku about Quantum Entanglement.